Much of this is already achieved via tele-conferencing but an online site might be another option once the technologies and process are understood.

I wonder if the lobbyists would go for it? Some may not go for the idea as face-to-face might be perceived as more effective in influencing and stating a particular position.

An online community cabinet or mini-summits as GY suggested with relevant ngos, departments and other advisory bodies contributing could open up the road to better participatory democracy.

Submissions could be made online in response to potential policy decisions and ideas proposed by government. Perhaps this sort of online access would be an extension to the current community cabinets.

Certainly worth looking at.

pelican wrote 7 February 2009 9:40:27 AM:

>Much of this is already achieved via tele-conferencing ...

Yes, teleconferences are useful, but can be combined with online forums, to get the best features of both.

>I wonder if the lobbyists would go for it? ...

I am sure the lobbyists would HATE it, which is why I suggested it. ;-)

Lobbyists want to be able to divide and conquer: presenting a diffierent case to each person they talk to. If they have to make their case on the record, this will make their job very difficult.

>Perhaps this sort of online access would be an extension
>to the current community cabinets. ...

Good idea. The face-to-face community cabinets must be very expensive to run. As well they are undemocratic, as most people cannot attend. An online extension of the process would be cheap and relatively straightforward to implement.

I suggested this for the "Inquiry by design" process to plan Sydney's transport infrastructure: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2008/11/fast-track-sydney-transport-with-web.html

The original proposal was a group of planners and stakeholders would get together and plan Sydney's transport in a few days. I suggested changing this to have part of the process online. The same materials the people at the face-to-face meeting had would be online and remote participants could make contributions. Few people could afford the time to sit on the end of a video conference all day, so there would be summaries and they could make a non-real time contribution.

Unfortunately the NSW government does not have consultative, or realistic, transport planning, instead believing the federal government will give billions of dollars for ill-defined metros <http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2008/09/metro-in-sydney-transport-plan.html>. The Australian Government could impose a consultative process on all those receiving such funding and provide the system to do it.

Tom, we have the software that could do all, or most, of what you are talking about, ready to go, more or less. We built it for a tender for the 2020 summit where we were unsuccessful.

I'm also interested in opening-up the OLO wiki for discussion, and thought the economic crisis might be a good one to do it on. I've actually started an entry for use in planning our March feature, which will be on the GFC. Very basic as I've just started. You can see the wiki, and what we did with food at http://issuesbriefs.nationalforum.com.au/wiki/Main_Page. You have to be approved to edit it, but we would be very liberal in approvals.

With the thread having not progressed for a while, I'll take the liberty of commenting upon some of tomw's remarks knowing that I'm not disrupting a rapidly progressing technical discussion.

First, this exchange between pelican and tomw:

pelican: "I wonder if the lobbyists would go for it?"

tomw: "I am sure the lobbyists would HATE it, which is why I suggested it."

Priceless. If OLO was to achieve nothing else than facilitate the bringing about of the situation whereby forked-tongue lobbying became no longer viable as a means to securing the 'inside track' in influencing government policy formation, it would have justified its existence.

A new dimension to democracy may be about to unfold. Potentially an extension of the secret ballot, in effect, in some ways, depending upon the transparency and auditability with which such a mechanism may operate. Also a bit like open source and Linux really, where the proof of the pudding is in the eating - with lots of very democratic taste-testing! We've been stuck with the policy-formation 'cathedral' model too long. Time to enter the 'bazaar'.

To digress slightly by way of illustration as to public perceptions of the significance of input to government policy formation, the comments to the current OLO article 'How the growth lobby threatens Australia's future' contains this rhetorical question and answer by the author:

"How do you think it was decided that it would be [a] good idea for John Howard to increase the rate of immigration to record levels after [he] won the 2001 elections for supposedly being a staunch protector of Australia's borders? .......I certainly don't remember it being discussed out in the open, with arguments for and against being put forward an[d] fairly considered. Clearly that it was a good idea to increase immigration was arrived at behind closed doors in discussions to which the wider public were not privy." See, for context, : http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=8485#134880 , then scroll about a bit.

More info on the proposed OLO 20/20 software capabilities?

Here's a bit of an update on what happened following that survey.
The Online survey which was conducted by Open Forum formed the basis of a report compiled by Global Access Partners (GAP) which was presented to AGIMO and used to inform the AGIMO Online Consultation Guidelines which are available to the public here>> http://webpublishing.agimo.gov.au/Online_Consultation_Guidelines
Since then the government has run a few trials on their own platforms but more individuals and departments have also experimented with consulting on existing platforms such as www.openforum.com.au Open Fourm encourages all pollies and government departments to come utlises our neutral, independent platform to consult with the public.
Cheers, Sally (from www.openforum.com.au)